Rebekah Farrugia, Ph.D.

Professor & Graduate Program Director
Office: 305 Wilson Hall
Phone: (248) 370-2065
Email: [email protected]

Research

Rebekah Farrugia is a professor of communication with a specialization in media and popular music studies. Her scholarship explores the relationships between gender, race, community and place in contemporary music genres such as electronic dance music and hip hop.

Her work has been published in journals such as Popular Music and Society, Popular Music, Arts, Departures in Qualitative Research and Dancecult: Journal of Electronic Dance Music Culture. Her first book Beyond the Dance Floor: Female DJs, Technology and Electronic Dance Music Culture (Intellect Books) examines the gendered practices of dance music culture and the community building practices of women DJs and producers in the early 2000s. Her co-authored monograph Women Rapping Revolution: Hip Hop and Community Building in Detroit (University of California Press) is a critical ethnography that explores women-centered hip hop production and its connection to cultural organization. Her current project examines the significance of public music and non-profit music organizations in Detroit and their relationship to the local music economy. 

Teaching, Service & Life

Dr. Farrugia teaches a variety of courses, such as Media and Social Identity; Gender, Sexuality and Media; Popular Music Studies; Rise of Electronic Media; and Introduction to Graduate Studies in Communication. She is also the graduate coordinator for the Master’s in Communication Program. In her spare time, she likes to hang out with her husband and two sons, exercise, travel, attend live music shows, read fiction, and binge television shows.